Mommy Dearest 2
by Lanie Sparks
Summary: Lee is having nightmares and learns a secret kept from him for more than thirty years


_'Amanda was right,_' Lee thought as he watched her modeling her newest piece of lingerie. _'She definitely has the cure for my blues.'_

"So, what do you think?"

"I think it's been far too long." he said as he pulled her into his arms and kissed her hungrily. He pulled back for a moment. "Are you sure everything's ok? I don't want to hurt you." He asked as he gently stroked her face.

"Yes, I'm sure. The doctor says I'm completely healed. You have nothing to worry about."

"Are you sure?" He asked again, a little skeptical. He remembered everything she'd gone through having the twins and he worried that there hadn't been enough time for her to heal. Amanda sighed in frustration.

"Would you just stop worrying. I'm fine. I promise." She kissed him and gently pushed him backwards onto the bed and kissed him passionately.

"You're getting a little agressive, aren't you, Mrs. Stetson?" He asked in between kisses.

"Is that a problem for you, Mr. Stetson?" she teased.

"Not at all. " He said as he pulled her down on top of him and kissed her again.

At the agency, the following morning, Francine walked into the Q Bureau while Lee was working on some paperwork. Lee looked up with a grin on his face, expecting to see Amanda.

"Well, don't you look like the cat who swallowed the canary?" Francine commented. His smile grew wider.

"And why shouldn't I? I've got everything I ever wanted in life." Amanda entered the room just then.

"Good morning, Francine." Amanda said cheerfully.

"Ah, so that's it."

"What?" Amanda asked, looking confused.

"Oh, I was just speculating on the ear to ear grin Lee's wearing this morning."

"Ahhh." 

"I take your doctor gave you a clean bill of health."

"Yes, he certainly did." She smiled at Lee. He smiled back. 

"Should I leave you two alone?"

"Not at all, Francine." Lee said. "We all need to get downstairs, anyway. Out staff meeting is starting in ten minutes."

"I almost forgot the reason I came up here. I came to bring you the file on Martin D'Angelo." Lee groaned. 

"Great!" he said, less than thrilled.

"Have fun!" Francine said as she breezed out the door.

"What is it?" Amanda inquired.

"Oh, just this dead-end case that I've been working on. Supposedly this D'Angelo character has been involved in some hired hits on high-ranking political officials, but we can't nail anything concrete down on him."

"Hmmm. " Amanda said thoughtfully. "Well, we'd better get to our meeting."

In the conference room an hour later, the meeting is breaking up. All the agents are filing out the door when Billy stops Amanda.

"Amanda, I need to see you for a moment." Lee stops, curious.

"What is it, Sir?" Amanda asks.

"I have an assignment for you since Lee's wrapped up with the D'Angelo case."

"What kind of assignment?" Lee demanded. He didn't want Amanda doing anything that would get her into trouble if he wasn't going to be there to protect her.

"Nothing major, just a little research assignment. It shouldn't take more than a day or two. By then, you should have D'Angelo wrapped up."

"I doubt that. I don't seem to be getting anywhere with it."

"Well, then if she gets her assignment wrapped up first, she can help you with yours."

"Why can't she just join me on this one. We're supposed to be partners."

"Why can't you just follow orders for once. I need Amanda on this assignment and you're busy with this other thing, so there shouldn't be a problem. Now, I suggest you get back to work on your own assignment and not worry do much about what Amanda's assignment is."

"Yes, Sir." He said as he left the room.

"Now, Amanda. This shouldn't be anything too difficult. This woman came to see me this morning. She's trying to find her family. Apparently, she was separated from them more than thirty years ago."

"Separated how?"

"I didn't get all the details. I'll leave that up to you. Here's the address where she's staying. You'll need to interview her to find out what you need to know. Good luck!"

"Thank you, Sir."

Amanda knocked on the door of a tiny house. She was surprised to find the door answered by the same woman she'd met at Emilio's the previous evening. 

"I'm sorry. I must have the wrong house. I was looking for..." she consulted the paper Billy had given her. "...Janine Stanton."

"That's me. What can I do for you?" Amanda reached for her badge and showed it to her.

"I'm Amanda Stetson. The agency sent me."

"Please come in." she opened the door wider. Amanda put her badge away and went in.

"I thought you said last night that your name was Stetson."

"It is. I mean it was. I don't know. The CIA told me that I shouldn't use my real name because I was in danger. When I talked to your Mr. Melrose this morning, I wasn't sure if I could trust him so I gave him the alias I've been using for the past thirty-three years."

"I see. How can I help you?"

"I just want to find my son, if he's still alive that is, the people I was running from may have killed him. I don't know. I just want to know what happened to him. That's why when I heard that bartender call you Mrs. Stetson last night, I jumped on you. I apologize for that."

"That's ok. I've got kids of my own. I'd probably feel the same way if I were separated from one of them."

"How many children do you have?"

"I'm not here to talk about my children. I'm here to learn about your child. And remember, the more I know, the more I can help."

"Ok. Well, my late husband is the one who got me into this business. I was just a civilian, minding my own business and I got involved in something that was way over my head." Amanda laughed as she remembered how she'd become an agent. "What's so funny?" 

"That's actually how I got involved in the spy business too. I met my husband at the train station. He was being chased by these guys and he handed me a package and told me to get on the train and give it to the man in the red hat. The only problem was that there were twenty-five men on that train with red hats. The next thing I knew, this annoying man was hounding me for that package." Jennifer laughed. 

"That sounds just like how I met my husband, but we were in London. I was walking down the street, just minding my own business when..." 

"...This cheeky yank stopped you." Amanda finished for her, reality dawning on her. Jennifer was stunned. "Then, he handed you a letter to deliver to the prime minister."

"Yes, how did you know?"

"You're Jennifer Hamilton-Stetson, aren't you?"

"Yes. But how..."

"I've read your diary."

"My diary?"

"Yes, and in it you wrote a very personal letter to your son, Lee, in which you told him how you really met his father."

"But...but, how did you have access to my diary? I thought that was gone long ago."

"It's a long story, but it goes back to the last case you and your husband were working on before the accident."

"Let me tell you something, that was no accident. That wreck was staged. It was supposed to have killed Matthew and me, only I survived."

"Why don't we talk about that for a minute. Tell me how you survived that terrible car wreck."

"I will, if you'll tell me one thing first."

"Ok."

"How do you know so much about me?"

"Because your son, Lee, is my husband and partner."

"You mean, he's an agent?"

"Yes, he is. He's one of the best. Every intelligence operative in the world has heard of the famous Scarecrow."

"Are you saying my son is Scarecrow? I've heard of The Scarecrow."

"Yes, he is." Tears welled up in Jennifer's eyes as she thought of the years that had gone by and all Lee must have seen in those years."Now, tell me about the wreck." 

"Oh, yes, of course." she said as she brushed her tears away. "I honestly don't know how I survived the crash. All I remember is seeing blinding headlights coming toward us. I screamed and then the next thing I remember is being in a hospital, not knowing who I was or how I'd gotten there. I was told that I'd been pulled out of a burning car, but that's all I knew. I had no memory of my husband, my son, or my job, or even the wreck that had sent me to the hospital." Amanda nodded as she remembered her own bout with amnesia a few years ago. "I was in the hospital for several months as I had been severely burned. I don't even know how long I was in the hospital for sure. It wasn't until almost two years after I got out of the hospital that I started remembering things, little by little. By the time I had all of my memory back, Lee was already living with my husband's half-brother Robert Clayton. I soon got in touch with some of my old CIA contacts and found out that Thomas Blackthorn was still up to no good. Not only that, but Matthew and I had been set up. He'd made it look like we were double agents during the war."

"I know. I helped Lee with that case."

"That made it very difficult for me. I had a few friends in the CIA who didn't believe the charges and were able to help me, but they couldn't fight to get the charges turned around because all the evidence we had against Blackthorn was burned up in that car."

"Not all of it. We found some things in your office in the basement of your old house."

"So, that's where you got my diary."

"Yes."

"The thing is, the house has already been sold and without the government backing me up, I couldn't exactly go charging in there to get the papers I needed. So, I was stuck."

"Why didn't you ever tell Lee you were still alive? He had nightmares for years because of what happened to you and his father."

"I wanted to, but I didn't want to get him killed. If Blackthorn had known that I was still alive, he would've tried again and again to kill me so that I couldn't expose him. The way that man was, he wouldn't have hesitated to use Lee against me and he was so young. I wanted him to have a better life than just running around hiding from Blackthorn."

"He's going to be very angry when he finds out." Amanda pointed out.

"You think so?"

"I know so. I know Lee. He's not going to take this lightly. He missed out on a lot when he was growing up. That's probably why he's so fiercely protective of our family. He never had a family when he was a kid and he doesn't want our children to go through what he went through."

"So now will you tell me about your children?" She was dying to know about her grandchildren.

"What is it you want to know?"

"How many you have for starters."

"Four. Lee is so happy. He is absolutely the best father. I've never seen him as happy as he is now. It's like he finally has what he's been waiting for his whole life."

"You sound like you know him very well. I'll bet you've been married for a long time."

"Less than a year, actually. Our first anniversary is in two weeks."

"Really?" she asked, looking confused.

"Really."

"Wait a minute! You've been married less than a year and you have four children? How is that possible?"

"The two older boys, Phillip and Jamie are my boys from my first marriage, but Lee loves them as if they were his own. Phillip's 15 and Jamie's 13. Then Lee and I have the twins, Matt and Jenny, and they're just six weeks old."

"You named them after us." she said, deeply touched.

"Yes. Lee and I both felt that since you weren't around to be a part of their lives that we could at least give them that part of their grandparents." It took all the strength Jennifer had not to break down and cry then and there."

"So, he's happy?"

"Yes."

"That's all I wanted to know. Thank you, Mrs. Stetson. I'm so glad to have met you. Now, I can rest a little easier knowing that."

"What? That's it? Are you saying that after everything he's been through, you don't want to be a part of his life?" She shook her head. 

"The only reason I wanted to find him is to know if he's dead or alive and if he's happy and he obviously is. I don't want to disrupt the life you have together."

"I don't believe this! Here, all the problems he's had in his life are because he didn't have you and his father to rely on and you're just going to run out on him again and not even let him know that you're alive?"

"Please, Mrs. Stetson..."

"First of all, stop with the Mrs. Stetson bit. My name is Amanda and I am your daughter-in-law. I think you could at least call me by my first name."

"Of course, Amanda. Thank you. I really appreciate the information you've given me."

"Are you trying to tell me that you've been away from your son for more than thirty years and you don't even want to see him to see what kind of a man he's become?"

"I can already see that just by looking at the woman he chose to spend his life with. Lee is lucky to have you. And yes, I would like to meet him, but I don't see how that is possible. If he's anything like his father was, he won't even want to speak to me."

"Don't worry about it. I'll find a way."


End file.
